The Parcel
by IceColdInAlex
Summary: "Mary was having tea with Cousin Isobel when the telegram arrived." (Set in December 1914. Warnings for implied character death.)


_December 1914_

* * *

Mary was having tea with Cousin Isobel when the telegram arrived.

The two women stood at the window and watched as the telegraph boy – 'boy'? He was middle-aged, elderly even. All the _boys_ were in France – dismounted from his bicycle and propped it against the gate.

On his journey up the drive, he disappeared behind the hedge, and Mary convinced herself, standing motionless at the window with a sense of churning dread in her stomach, that he would never reappear. She willed him away; there were other houses, other families, further along. The Taylors next door had three sons – they could afford to lose one. She would have obliterated all three Taylor boys off the face of the earth if it meant she could have prevented Clarke coming through the gate and crunching across the gravel.

The doorbell chimed, and she almost shouted out: _Don't answer it. He'll give up, he'll go away_. If he went away, it wouldn't have happened. Only by now she was in the hall, and the shadow of the postman rippled in the undulating panes of glass.

Molesley hurried to answer the door, and Isobel came out of the drawing room, fearing the worst because no telegram was innocent. She, too, disappeared down the hall, and, a minute later, Mary heard a thin, despairing cry.

_That doesn't sound like Isobel_. Mary's hands gripped the doorframe. _Doesn't sound like her at all_.

* * *

Isobel left her work at the hospital and became a recluse, lying on the sofa in the living room. Edith, having nothing else to do, moved into Crawley House and was in constant attendance, though after the first week she began to get resentful. She had her own duties to occupy her, her own social calls. And what did Mary do? Go off and see her friends in York and London, and not just for a day, either. No, she stayed there two or three nights at a time. In Edith's eyes, it was perfectly simple what should happen. Mary should stay at home and look after Isobel – she was closer to the woman, after all – freeing Edith to get on with her own life.

Mary refused.

"You are so selfish," Edith snapped. "I don't think I've ever met anybody as selfish as you."

"Yes, I am selfish," Mary replied. "I need to be."

Their father said very little, but Mary knew he agreed with Edith. Everybody – Cora, Violet, Aunt Rosamund, her American cousins, Mrs Bird, the village, the gardener, the gardener's wife, and, for all she knew, the gardener's dog – agreed with Edith. But it was only her father's opinion that hurt.

It made no difference, really. She still went down to London at the weekends, and during the week, stayed in the Abbey and forced herself to live. She had very little contact with other people at Downton. She seemed to be surrounded by a great grey silence, cavernous ceilings, long echoing corridors, doors emptying into vacant rooms – she supposed the vast estate had always been rather lonely, but she noticed it more now. On the rare occasions when she had to meet people, she barely coped. A visit to the village lasted a mere twenty minutes, before she began to feel anxious to get away.

* * *

Not long after the telegram arrived, Mary was at Crawley House when once again a postman turned into the drive. This time he was carrying a big brown-paper parcel entwined with thick string. Already fearful of what it might contain, she went into the sitting room where Edith sat with Isobel, who reclined on the sofa. She'd hardly moved since the news of Matthew's death. Her skin had slackened, as if she'd shrunk inside it. Until recently, Mary had still considered her a beautiful woman, though she didn't think anybody would think so now.

It filled her with guilt, but then, almost at once, the impatience returned. She couldn't bear the weeping and wailing that punctuated Isobel's long silences. Mary was determined not to grieve, and particularly not to grieve like _that_. Her own first reaction to the news had been a blaze of euphoria; immediately she ached to be in the saddle and gallop across the rolling hills. Grief was for the dead, and Matthew would never be dead while she was alive and able to ride a horse.

But now here the three of them were. They looked at the parcel, and then at each other.

"Well," Edith said.

Suddenly sick of the suspense, Mary began trying to unfasten the knots, but her fingers felt swollen and fumbled at the string.

"Ring for Mrs Bird," Edith said. "She'll have some scissors."

Mrs Bird's eyes widened when she saw the parcel. She looked rather shamefacedly excited, as she had when the telegram arrived. She'd been genuinely fond of Matthew, but still, his death was drama in a dreary life. She'd talk about him in the village bakery – no doubt the family's bereavement had enhanced her status there.

"It'll be his things," she said. "They send them back. They did with Mrs Hasting's lad."

The scissors were fetched and the string cut, and the first layer of brown paper stripped away. As they unwrapped it, something entirely horrifying entered the room: the smell of the front line. Filthy water, thick acrid mud, chlorine gas, decomposition, and because it was a smell, not a sight, Mary was utterly defenceless against it. She walked, stiff-legged and nauseous, to the window, where she looked out over the lawn and trees, not seeing anything, every nerve and muscle in her body fighting to avoid that smell.

When she turned back into the room they'd got the parcel unwrapped. Tunic, belt, a periscope, breeches, peaked cap, puttees, boots – all reeking of the same yellow-brown stench. Isobel touched the tunic, timidly, stroking the sleeve nearest to her. At first, she seemed calm, but then her mouth sagged at the corners, a crease appeared between her eyebrows and she began to cry. Not like an adult. It was the dreadful, open-mouthed wail of an abandoned baby.

Edith gathered the things together frantically and thrust the bundle into Mary's arms. "Take it away."

"Where shall I put it?"

"How do I know? Just get rid of it, for God's sake."

Mary backed out of the room – bumping into Mrs Bird, who'd heard the cry and was rushing in to help – and took the parcel upstairs to Matthew's room, but then she remembered that Isobel often came up here and sat in the window for hours on end, looking down the road into the village, to the train station where Mary had seen him for the last time.

Nowhere seemed to be the right place. In the end, she wrapped everything up again as best she could and went downstairs. She collected her hat and coat and walked briskly back to the Abbey, holding the package at arm's length, looking anywhere but at it. She took it up into the attic and pushed it deep into a cavity under the eaves at the back, out of sight. Then she piled up old blankets and a rug in front of it, anything to fend off the smell. Closing the door at the top of the stairs, she felt as if she'd disposed of a corpse. In a way, she supposed she had.

* * *

The following day Isobel left for a cousin's house in Manchester, Edith went to stay with Aunt Rosamund, and Mary was left alone, glad to be alone. The parcel containing Matthew's clothes remained in her mind, but separated from her waking life, like a nightmare in which the detail is entirely forgotten, though the fear survives.

Now that Isobel had gone, there was no need to escape to London. She spent all the hours of daylight out riding Diamond, losing track of the time as she galloped and galloped, her thighs aching as she spurred the horse on even faster. She laughed as her heart beat frantically beneath her chest, as the stormy grey-blue clouds above her transformed into rifles, horses, Matthew's sad eyes at a garden party. The wind whipped around her, his dying breath. She laughed until she almost fell off the horse from the effort of trying not to weep instead.

She knew she was being reckless, stupid. She could fall, or run into a tree. But she needed her lungs to burn. She needed to feel the bitter air burn her from the inside, and she needed to be reckless, because it was the only thing she could control.

Riding numbed the pain; nothing else did. In the evenings, when she was too exhausted to do anything, she sat in front of the fire, trying to read. Usually, she had to abandon the attempt because nothing stayed in her head. She could read the same paragraph a dozen times and still not be able to remember what it said. Above her head the floorboards creaked as if somebody were pacing up and down in the corridor outside the attic. She snapped her book shut and went to bed, clutching Matthew's photo to her.

* * *

For long stretches of time it felt as if he might not have been dead at all. He wasn't present, but then he hadn't been present for the past few months. There was no body, no grave, no ceremony. Only his spare clothes remained, the things he'd left behind when he went forwards to the line for the last time, and they'd been pushed out of sight.

At first, his almost-existence didn't bother her, but as weeks went by, not knowing how he'd died became a torment. She had to make his death real – otherwise the limbo state could go on forever.

She knew there were people who cherished the hope that their sons or husbands were still alive, prisoners of war, perhaps, or lost, wandering the French countryside with no memory of who they were. Mary thought they were hardly consoling thoughts, and cowardly – anything, rather than face up to the finality of death. It was finality she had begun to crave.

She knew so little. What did 'Missing, Believed Killed' actually mean? What degree of certainty did it imply? The telegram, and the official letter that followed, were frustratingly short, and told her nothing. She was left with only her own imagination to fill the gap, and that was hardly a mine of information. Now, when it was too late, she'd have liked to know the details of Matthew's life out there, but her long insistence on ignoring the war worked against her. When she tried to picture his final hours, her mind was blank.

So instead, she just thought about Matthew.

She settled herself in a chair and closed her eyes. She could see him better like this, the shape of his head, the wave of his hair, the startling blue eyes so unlike her own, his lips, surprisingly soft and full, and then his body: the broad shoulders, his firm chest…

It was about this time that she became aware that the smell of his clothes had begun to invade the lower rooms.

At first, she thought she must be imagining it. She was reminded of how the smell of the corpse of Pamuk had pursued her even when he had been buried. She remembered lying in bed at night, sniffing, always catching the scent of sweat and musky cologne though it couldn't possibly have been there. Warily, she lifted her head and sniffed, relieved to find only the familiar smell of hand lotion and perfume. The smell was just her imagination running away from her. She had to get a grip, stop thinking about the uniform, thrust it away again out of sight, out of mind. And for a time she succeeded: the smell did seem to go away, only to return, a few days later, even more pungent than before.

The clothes in the attic drew her to them. At last, early one morning in the grim, grey, half-light, she braced herself to go upstairs to the attic. On the stairs, she tried to convince herself there would be nothing there, they'd have turned to dust, or mice would have eaten them. But she knew, even before she fumbled behind the rug and blankets, that they were still there, instantly recognisable to her fingertips by the stiffness of the cloth. She pulled the tunic clear of the paper and shook it, coughing as a cloud of thick dust enveloped her. Then she replaced the tunic and carried the parcel down the narrow stairs.

At the foot of the stairs she hesitated, cradling the lifeless bundle in her arms, wondering where to take it, almost afraid of them. But then she shook herself; they were his things – _Matthew's_ things – she couldn't be fearful of them. She took them into her room and locked the door.

Mary dropped the parcel on the floor beside the bed, and knelt down to look at the clothes. The smell was still there, but fainter now. This was hardly reassuring, since it meant she must have been imagining it. On a sudden impulse, she began laying out the garments on the bed: the peaked cap, the tunic, the Sam Browne belt and revolver case, breeches, puttees, boots… And there he was, his body shaped by the clothes he'd worn in life.

The smell was getting stronger again. She suddenly realised that imagining how he'd died had been a grievous mistake – she had sat and looked out of the window, seeing his figure, bleeding from a bullet wound, bayonet wound, shrapnel, staggering and collapsing, lying under the cold unmoving stars.

But that had been a mistake, too; if he'd died like that, there would have been a body, and a grave, and a ceremony. Matthew had been disintegrated in a second. Painless, everyone said. But inhuman. God. Inhuman.

She got down on her knees and pressed her face against the tunic, feeling the rough cloth scrape her chin, like the feel of his cheek in life. With her nose buried in the khaki fabric, she caught the faint scent of his body and the autumnal scent of sweat underneath the stagnant water and the mud and the gas. She felt her chest constrict painfully.

Mary stroked the cloth, her fingernails making a dull scraping sound on the threads, and then heard a crackle of paper from the left breast-pocket. She scrabbled at it and thrust her hand inside, finding a hole in the lining, big enough to fit two fingers through. The paper was there. She grasped it between her fingers like tweezers, and manoeuvred it up into the blood-red light of her room.

Some sort of list – a company roll. _Martin. Jones. Barker. _She could have wept with disappointment, but then she turned the page over and saw her own name.

_Mary – _

_I've had three goes at this already, so this has to be the last one, because we're moving forward soon. There'll be no time for writing after that. _

_It's been a long time since we last saw each other – and I know we hardly parted on the best of terms – but I wanted, needed, to write. Here, this place of hell, has changed things. I won't go into detail. You might not believe me if I did – even if you were to see for yourself. Though thank God you aren't here; I don't believe any human being should have to be._

_There's no way of saying this without sounding melodramatic, but I'm terrified. Today is cold and wet, and I lost seven men. I feel as if everyone here has a clock over their heads, counting down the seconds to their time – though that isn't what I'm fearful of. Mary, I'm scared I am becoming heartless. I have been here just a month, but already, I am hardened to the sight of wounds and death. The men I have lost – the men I've killed – have all faded into each other. The nature of their passing has become unobtrusive. I am scared that I am losing myself._

_I want you to know, should something happen to me – and today has been a bad day with the promise of worse to come so there's every chance that it might – that I'm sorry. I would like very much for us to be friends again, Mary, and I hope I can tell you that in person soon. I don't suppose you'll reply, especially after_

Nothing else.

Mary sunk to the floor; cold, collected Mary fell to her knees by the bed and broke into cries of sorrow so piercing and agonising, feeling as if she was dying from the inside.

* * *

_Thank you for reading; reviews are always welcome and appreciated. Inspired by Toby's Room by Pat Barker. _


End file.
